Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Every attempt to understand the Christian sacraments makes use of comparisons or analogies with other rituals, events, or customs. Calvin and those who followed him, for example, spoke of the sacraments as “seals,” and compared them to the “seal of approval” that an official impresses on a document. Thinking about…
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out in his essay "Hitler and Israel, or On Prayer" (available for $2.00 from Biblical Horizons ) that it is God’s word "No!" that establishes in a culture the distinction between the Creator and the creature. The Bible repeatedly says "No!" to every human attempt to…
If you missed Gattaca at the movie theaters, you can probably check it out from your local video store now. And you should. This is one of those relatively rare thought-provoking movies that can stand being watched with brain in gear more than once. It is also poetic, sensitive, visually…
Part 4: The Nephilim Factor Western Civilization partakes of what I call "the Nephilim Factor." The Enoch Factor means that the pagans get there first. This is both a blessing and a danger. As a blessing, it means that they work out techniques of dominion over the lower creation that…
The Worship Service Then the one speaking with me took me by the hair and lifted me into the air in the middle of the great room. And as I watched, I saw people entering the room to the sound of the great bells outside. Then entered from all four…
Part 3: Philosophy (continued) If we realize that human beings are the images of God, and that man hates God, then we realize that all non-Christian political philosophy is founded on a fundamental hatred of other human beings, a hatred manifest in contempt. Rome, like Enoch, was founded on the…
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In his history of Protestant theology in the 19th century, Barth lists some of the sermon topics of one Traugott Gunther Roller of Schonfels in Kur-Saxony: Fourth Sunday after Epiphany: The Duties of a Christian Congregation saved from the Grave Risk of Fire. Easter: Reasonable Rules for the Christian Burial…
Bediako neatly describes the dualism that results when the church attempts to apply the questions and answers of European or American Christianity to Africa without addressing the questions of Africans themselves. He quotes John Taylor’s pointed question: “if Christ were to appear as the answer to the questions that Africans…
Bediako criticizes other African theologians who claim that there is no African theological tradition. There is, he admits, not much if we’re looking for school theology. But focusing on that lack misses the real action - the “grassroots” theology expressed in songs, worship, sermons, personal evangelism, etc. And this is…
One of Afua Kuma’s hymns to Jesus describes Him as an arriving hero: “Children rush to meet Him crowds of young people rush about to make Him welcome. Chief of young women: they have strung a necklace of gold nuggets and beads and hung it around Your neck so we…
In the songs and praises of the illiterate Ghanian Christian, Christina Afua Gyan (or Afua Kuma), Jesus is described as a powerful Protector in a world teeming with dangers. “Should the devil himself become a lion and chase us as his prey, we shall have no fear Lamb of God!…
What Milbank describes as “postmodern Kantianism” (in Zizek, Nancy, and others) wants to take evil seriously, which means “positively.” They do not think Augustine’s theory adequately accounts for modern evil, complaining that the Augustinian account’s weakness left Europe open to the possibility of radical evil. Milbank suggests on the contrary…
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